Some dovetail tweaks
I’ve been making dovetails for the past week, which means I’ve screwed up a lot of dovetails. In no particular order, here are some of the lessons I’ve learned.
0) My Incra jig rocks.
1) Joint and plane EVERYTHING. If it ain’t square, the joints don’t fly. These even applies to the small little highlight piece when cutting double dovetails… it can’t be that important, right? Wrong!
2) Check your router table, fence, and everything else you can think of for true, even in the weirder dimensions. My router table was bulging upward in the center by a good 1/16″!
3) Cut the pins fast; they’ll come out OK. Cut the tails slow, especially as the bit leaves the wood. This is easy to screw up, in which case you wind up with splinters near the dovetail corners.
4) Think twice before you apply glue. Hint: it doesn’t go on the end grain of the pin board. Use extra glue in the tail slots; there’s room to spare because the round router bit cuts out more wood than the square tails need.
5) Clamp the joint. It will help close any cracks between dovetails.
6) Along the same lines, start out by gluing two joints, not just one, and spread the loose ends apart slightly. It will serve as a lever to close the dovetails so you don’t show cracks.
7) If cutting a double dovetail and the accent piece cracks, don’t sweat it. Glue and clamp it at the same time you glue it into the main board–it will be invisible when it’s dry.
8) If you assemble a joint and then realize you’ve messed it up, you can use a bandsaw to save half the boards. Cut notches between the tails, then use pliers to pull the formerly tight-fitting pieces out.
9) Once the thing is together, pack all your mistakes with liquid wood. No one will ever notice.
Hope this helps.
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